If we are serious, it's necessary to admit that an arch is better than a cross-bow.
I hate to compare, but look at this recreation of Crecy's Battle.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b918MyaXeKA/Ruk-hYAly6I/AAAAAAAAAHQ/2OPmam3z17A/s1600-h/battle-crecy.jpg


Since you see, the men of the left side meet wrapped in a rain of arrows " as Oblivion " :laugh: , while they try to load his heavy weapon.
The man who drew this surely died of laugh.

But, sincerely, I would like that the cross-bows were appearing again ... with better animations. Shoot and flee!.

That's the problem. From a combat point of view, crossbows are a one-shot weapon: You fire it, drop it, and pull out your sword. The benefit would be massive single target damage, and many would fire it from stealth. It should 1SK or came close to it on most mobs.

I just wanna address one thing I take major issue with in this post.. why in the world would you wild a crossbow and a.sword at the same time!? If you're far away from an enemy, you use a bow... if you're close, you use a sword... what practical application does wielding both at the same time hold? Wasting a hand with an ineffective weapon no matter what distance the combat is taking place?

In the crossbow versus longbow argument, I always like to refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Opening_moves.


Glass swords aren't the same sort of glass found in your windows, for example. Said glass has to be mined, and is ore from fallen asteroids, or something like that. Either way, when refined, this ore can be made extremely sharp, and was probably named glass because of its transparent nature. The difference between an Iron Warhammer and a Glass sword would be... Well, like the difference between a club and an obsidian scalpel. The club has mass, sure, but it's not as dense as other comparable weapons or as well crafted, resulting in a lot less damage. The scalpel however, is made of one of the sharpest materials on Earth.

They both inflict different types of damage (which Oblivion doesn't reflect) but the Glass knife would do far more damage in its own specific damage type than the hammer would. Morrowind would make for a better comparison really - if you try to club someone with a knife, it ain't gonna work. Try to stab someone with a hammer, it ain't gonna work. But if you stab someone with the Glass, and club someone with the hammer, the knife would do more damage overall. Anyway, in a world where magic exists, shooting fire out your hands is realistic. In a world where hand-eye coordination exists, dual crossbows being used in combat isn't.


Out of interest, have you ever actually lifted a real longsword? If yes, cool. Now lift two at once. Now hold them directly in front of you for 10 minutes straight. Now try and kill someone with them. See where I'm going with this?

These things are majorly heavy. Sword and dagger makes sense though. Duels were originally fought with a sabre and dagger (sabre in fencing terms, not the massive blades you see in Pirates of the Caribbean).

Boom boom boom, yeah I was gunnin' And then you look, all you see is NPCs runnin'

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Crossbows were good for my Assiassin in Morrowind for the sniper from the rooftop shot.
Bolts should be very slow in reload , but do more damage than an arrow.
no crossbow in each hand sillyness.

Maybe you should ask any combatant from 1650-1850 why he would want to use a sword and a pistol. And seeing as there are no guns in TES, we'd have to assume that the closest we would ever come is a http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Crossbow_pistol_IMG_3841.jpg.

as soon as you start putting magazines on crossbows you might as well put in guns... just saying thats a little ridiculous, the thing that makes TES great is that it is relatively grounded in realism from a weapons standpoint

Swords and pistols, fine... but at the same time? It's just downright unnecessary. Why don't you, I.stead of wielding a useless crossbow while there's an orc with a warhammer on top of you, use. a. SHIELD!? Or when your opponent is at range, why use a weaker 1 handed crossbow and hold a useless melee weapon at the same time? What are you gunna do? Throw your sword at the guy?

Magazines on x-bows are perfectly realistic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zhugenu-payne.jpg

The crossbow is not so useless when you place a bolt in the face of who ever is charging you. He could have a chainsaw for all I care, and my backup could be a sharpened spoon. Even if he's not killed, he's going to be paused for that split second long enough to get the first strike in. And that's if he's not killed.

And you have to think about from a perspective of you don't know what range you are going to encounter your enemy at. Say you are clearing a dungeon. If the orc with the warhammer appears at the end of a hallway, and you have a sword and a shield, you have to wait for him to come to you. And you may still be outclassed, as that warhammer can shatter your shield.

Now, let's say you just decide to take the standard, full size crossbow. If that same orc appears around a corner, you're dead before you can pull the trigger, or if you do and he doesn't die, or you miss, you're screwed.

So the idea behind having one ranged weapon and one melee weapon is that no matter what enemy engages you at what time, you are prepared to react.

I hope crossbows are in, as much as I doubt they will be, primarily as an assassination/sniping tool (inhuming some poor fool from a rooftop with a single quarrel).

In gameplay, the slow rate of reloading could be represented by separating the loading/winding and firing into two distinct actions; perhaps only a single quarrel could be equipped at a time, triggering an action (readying the crossbow to fire). Reloading would then require the player to enter the menu again, select another quarrel, and wait for the readying action before firing again. This would make them rather impractical for anything but one or two powerful shots at an unaware or still-distant target... which is exactly what crossbows are.

The Rule of Cool ought to allow even dual-wielded crossbows, in this case (the player would have to load and ready two crossbows in preparation), though grip would be rather awkward (excepting hand crossbows), and accuracy horribly compromised in reality.

Scopes and magazines... eh. They'd be fun as rare Dwemer accessories, but there's no way Beth are going to put this much effort into a single fairly obscure weapon of limited usefulness.

ok sherlock what about a steel warhammer doing less damage than a glass mace?

you do know this game has shortswords? he didn't say anything about longswords.Of course longswords can weigh as light as 3 pounds making dual wielding possible. Out of interest do you know the draw back weight for bows before the 19th century? up to 180lbs. i think it's safe to say warriors in the elder scrolls era could handle cinderbrick boxing gloves

thankyou. you pretty much sumed up how i feel about crossbows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow reloaded faster. They aren't nicknamed "the original submachine guns" for nothing.

The great advantage of crossbows was that you could teach a peasant to shoot one in a week. Bows took years to master. At short range crossbows also packed a bigger punch. The average weight of a quarrel was double that of an arrow and initial velocity was very good. I do not think that the OP is correct in regarding the accurate range of a medieval crossbow as 350+ yards. 50 is more like it. Modern ones might do much better. So with regards to the original question, no, properly modeled crossbows would not be like a snipers rifle. They could, however, be a devastating short range weapon.

Beyond that bows had the advantage in most regards, especially with regards to rate of fire. Something like 6 to 1. Far more accurate at range too. Even with bows, the idea was to launch 1000 arrows at a time at a mass of troops, not to do the Robin Hood thing.

In a game though, the Robin Hood thing is fun .